This was presented at the Society of Scientific Studies in Religion (SSSR) in Indiannapolis, IN in Oct 2014. It discusses preliminary ideas based on my current doctoral research on religious literacy and religious bullying. Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss the ideas in detail. Presentation abstract: Employed in international private sector companies, and later as a Canadian school teacher, and high school community counselor, I had the opportunity of observing religious and non-religious adult and student perspectives. From these observations, I introduce the possibility of a cycle of religious (il)literacy that may be perpetuating in our society today. Based on Moore’s (2007) concepts of religious literacy and illiteracy, I discuss the possibility that student religious literacy today is important to build the bridge for societal religious literacy tomorrow. As students become parents, society needs to recognize students’ salient roles in being religious literate individuals, especially in diverse societies. Building on my Masters research, this paper presents a theoretical consideration of a religious (il)literacy cycle within my broader research on religious literacy and religious based bullying within public school contexts in Montreal, Quebec and Modesto, California. Hence, only a brief discussion on research methods will be offered.

1. A cycle of religious
(il)literacy beginning
with students today
Society for Scientific Study of Religion
Wing Yu Alice Chan, McGill University
October 2014
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

2. Religious Literacy
• Religious illiteracy*:
Lack of understanding re:
• “1) The basic tenets of the
world’s religious traditions and
other religious expressions not
categorized by tradition;
• 2) the diversity of
expressions and beliefs
within traditions and
representations; and
• 3) the profound role that
religion plays in human social,
cultural, and political life
historically and today.” (AAR,
2010, 4)
Religious literacy:
• The ability to discern and
analyze the intersections
of religion within social,
political, and cultural life
(Moore, 2007).

3. Religious Bullying
• Religious bullying is a type of bullying
• Occurs due to the differences in religious identities
between the bully and bullied.
• Can be manifested through intentional emotional,
mental, or physical degradation through physical,
psychological, or verbal means in-person and/or
online.
• (Kirman, 2004; PrevNet; stopbullying.gov).

4. Agenda
• Positionality
• Theoretical considerations
• Implications
• How realistic are these implications?
 Adult and student perspectives today
• What of tomorrow’s adults?

5. Positionality
•Teachers are
uncomfortable
discussing
religion
•Youth teased for
religion without
teacher support
•Religious
bullying in the
classroom
•Disgruntled
employees
Employee
Grade 6-8
Teacher
Teacher-
Researcher
Community
High School
Counselor

6. Youth
Parent/
Teacher/
Adult
Adult

7. Theoretical considerations
regarding religious bullying
• Research on bullying has identified an
intergenerational link: parents who bully in
childhood are likely to have children who also bully
their peers (Farrington, 1993, in Craig & Edge,
2012).
• Bullied youth can carry their feelings of hurt and
fear into their adult life (Craig & Edge, 2012).

8. Cram’s (2001) nine themes:
1. The feeling of abandonment by significant others.
2. The desire to seek revenge.
3. “Deep feelings of repulsion, fear, and hate.”
4. The level of violence in childhood.
5. Children are familiar with bodily experiences.
6. Children know the pain of emotional abuse.
7. The hurt child, the victim of the bully, is part of the
unhealed, hurting adult.
8. Adults feel guilty because of childhood behaviour.
9. Those who watch bully behaviour are as deeply affected as
those who are directly bullied.

9. 2012 and 2013: 500+ Sikh students surveyed, 700+ in focus groups,
50 students interviewed (http://sikhcoalition.org/documents/pdf/go-home-terrorist.pdf, 2014)

10. Religion in Education:
Contribution to Dialogue
Key findings (4 of 17):
• The majority of students appreciated the religious
heterogeneity in their societies, although a range of
prejudices were expressed.
• The most important source of information about
religions and worldviews is generally the family,
followed by the school.
• Irrespective of their religious positions a majority of
students are interested in learning about religions in
school.
• Those who learn about religious diversity in school
are more willing to enter into conversations about
religions and worldviews with students from other
backgrounds than those who do not have this
opportunity for learning.
(REDCo, 2009, retrieved from http://www.redco.uni-hamburg.
de/cosmea/core/corebase/mediabase/awr/redco/research_findings/REDCo_policy_rec_eng.pdf

11. Modesto, California
In response to the religiously bullied Sikh students
and the over 300,000 Sikhs residing in California,
the Bill “Declares that the World Geography-World
Religion class has been very successful in helping
Sikh pupils feel more accepted and in helping pupils
understand their First Amendment rights,
understand and practice the character traits of
respect and responsibility, become informed about
the religious diversity in their community and the
world, and obtain greater understanding about the
six major world religions.” (California Assembly
Committee on Education, ACR 154, 2014).

12. Implications

13. Implications
• Problematically, religious illiteracy promotes
religious and racial bigotry, violence, “and hinders
cooperative endeavors across the full scale of
human interactions from interpersonal
relationship to negotiations between and within
nation-states” (Moore, 2014, p. 379).
• This type of bullying requires immediate attention
as witnesses or victims of religious bullying are
often alienated and exposed to injustices, which
can lead to mental health, suicide, and religio-political
affiliation through religious extremism,
thus harming the global society (Keddie, 1998;
Moghaddam, 2005).

14. Adult & Student
perspectives today

15. Source:
http://www.economist.c
om/news/business/2160
0694-managers-are-having-
accommodate-workers-
religious-beliefs-
while-taking-care-
expressing

16. Muslim students
• “Run-of-the-mill bullied child
syndrome” exists among all Muslim
American children (Kabf, 1998).
• Muslim Canadians have similar
experiences
 “My cousins who came from Iran
when they were 8 or 10…went to
public schools…and they were
ostracized for wearing the
veil…They still believe in Islam and
everything, but they don’t wear the
veil, and they’ve loosened up a lot
and very much become Westernized
in order to fit in and to be able to
make friends...” (Ali, research
participant, Beyer, 2013).
Photo source: Reza, National Geographic Society,
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/10/photogalleries/InsideMecca/index.html

17. What will the
future bring?

18. http://www.pewforum.org/2014/04/04/global-religious-diversity/

19. Hindu students
Sonya: University cohort of 42 student teachers
had a handful of ‘brown people’: “…you can count
the brown people on your hands.” (Nason Clark
and Holtmann, 2013)
Sonya: Introduced
Diwali to Gr 2 students
during a lesson on
celebrations around the
world because it had
been missing in her own
public education
experience.
Students: saw
Indian dress,
pictures, home
videos, and
were very
impressed.
Photo source: Joe McNally, National Geographic, http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/diwali-festival-of-lights/#

20. Citizenship & Worldview education
“…combining democratic education for citizenship
and religious and worldview education in schools”
(Miedema, 2014, 370).
“The moral of the story is not just that we need mere
tolerance. It is that we need better education – and
not because it is nice to be multicultural but because
the world’s religions, no longer quarantined in the
nations of their birth, now live and move among us:
yoga in the church halls, nirvana in our dictionaries,
and Sikhs at our gas stations.” (Prothero, 2007, 3).

21. Lingering thoughts
• Are there connections to religious literacy programs
and religious bullying?
• If a cycle of religious (il)literacy really exists, is
Modesto, California’s World Geography & World
Religions (WGWR) course and/or Montreal, Quebec’s
Ethics and Religious Culture program the solution?
• Is a cycle of religious (il)literacy perpetuated in some
areas and not others?
• The UK (and possibly other countries) have had RE
programs for decades and yet still have religious
bullying problems. Are schools not the solution?
• Is parent and community involvement the solution?
What if this is unattainable?

22. References
American Academy of Religion. (2010). Guidelines for teaching about religion in K-12 public schools in the United States. American Academy of Religion. Retrieved from http://www.aarweb.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/Publications/epublications/AARK-12CurriculumGuidelines.pdf
Beyer, P., & Ramji, R. (2013). Growing up Canadian: Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
California Assembly Committee on Education, ACR 154. (June 2014). http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/asm/ab_0151-0200/acr_154_cfa_20140609_162804_asm_comm.html
California Legislature , AB 1750. (May 2014). http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/asm/ab_1701-1750/ab_1750_cfa_20140527_183032_asm_floor.html
CBC News. (January 9, 2014) “EMSB says secular charter endorses bullying: Montreal's largest English school board says Bill 60 'brings out the worst in Quebec society'” Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/#!/content/1.2489840.
Craig, W., & Edge, H. M. (2012). The health of Canada’s young people: a mental health focus. Public Health Agency of Canada. Retrieved from http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/hp-ps/dca-dea/publications/hbsc-mental-mentale/bullying-intimidation-eng.php
Cram, Ronald Hecker. (2001). Memories by Christian Adults of Childhood Bullying Experiences: Implications for Adult Religious Self-Understanding. Religious Education. 96(3), 326-350. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/003440801317081370.
Jeong, Seokijn and Byung Hyun Lee. (2013). A Multilevel Examination of Peer Victimization and Bullying Preventions in Schools. Journal of Criminology, 2013 (2013), Article ID 735397, 10 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/735397
Keddie, N. R. (1998). The new religious politics: Where, when, and why do "fundamentalisms" appear? Comparative Studies in Society and History , 40(4), 696-723. http://www.jstor.org/stable/179307
Kirman, J. (2004). “Using the them of bullying to teach about human rights in the social studies.” McGill Journal of Education. 39(3), 327-341.
Lee R.T., and Brotheridge C.M. “When prey turns predatory: Workplace bullying as predictor of counteragression / bullying, coping, and well-being”. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology. 2006, 00 (0): 1 -26
Miedema, S. (2014). “Coming out religiously!” Religion, the public sphere, and religious identity formation. Religious Education, 109(4), 362-378.
Moghaddam, F. M. (2005). The Staircase to terrorism: A psychological exploration. The American Psychologist, 60, 2, 161-169.
Moore, D. (2007). Overcoming religious illiteracy: A cultural studies approach to the study of religion in secondary education. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.
Moore, D. (2014). Overcoming religious illiteracy: Expanding the boundaries of religious education. Religious Education, 109(4), 379-389.
Nason-Clark, N. and C. Holtmann (2013). Perpetuating religion and culture: Hindu women in Growing up Canadian: Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists by P. Beyer and R. Ramji. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Prevnet. (2014). “Facts and solutions”. Retrieved from http://www.prevnet.ca/bullying/facts-and-Solutions.
Prothero, S. (2007). Religious literacy: What every American needs to know – and doesn’t. New York, NY: Harper San Francisco.
REDCo. (2009). Religion in Education: Contribution to Dialogue. Policy recommendations of the REDCo research project. Retrieved from http://www.redco.uni-hamburg.de/cosmea/core/corebase/mediabase/awr/redco/research_findings/REDCo_policy_rec_eng.pdf
Sikh Coalition. (2014). “Go Home, Terrorist”: A Report on Bullying Against Sikh American School Children . Retrieved from http://sikhcoalition.org/documents/pdf/go-home-terrorist.pdf .
Stopbullying.gov. (2014). “Religion and Faith” Retrieved from http://www.stopbullying.gov/at-risk/groups/index.html

23. Thank you!
Email: alice.chan@mail.mcgill.ca
Twitter: awychan

24. Appendix

25. Source:
http://torontoist.
com/2014/10/the-rise-
of-islamophobia-
in-torontos-election/

26. Parti Quebecois’s proposed Charter of
Values (2013)
“EMSB says secular charter endorses
bullying” (CBC News, Jan 9, 2014)
Photo source: http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2014/01/21/the-current-is-coming-to-montreal/;
http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/#!/content/1.2489840; Article: http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/lester-b-pearson-school-board-
condemns-charter-of-values-1.1602905#ixzz2t4EthBoJ